Rulers of the Darkness

Then the first redhead stepped on a buried egg and abruptly ceased to be. "Good riddance, you son of a whore!" Leudast shouted. Soldiers had spent weeks burying eggs. Soldiers and conscripted peasants had spent those same weeks fortifying the ground between the belts. Some of those peasants might have gone back to their farms. Others, Leudast was sure, remained in the salient. He wondered how many of them would come out once more.

Now that the Algarvians were out in the open, Unkerlanter egg-tossers began flinging death their way. Unkerlanter dragons swooped low on Mezentio's men. Some of them dropped eggs, too. Others flamed footsoldiers and behemoths, too. Leudast cheered again.

More Algarvian behemoths than usual seemed to be carrying heavy sticks. Those were less useful than egg-tossers against targets on the ground, but ever so much more useful against dragons. Their thick, strong beams seared the air. Several dragons fell. One, though, smashed into two behemoths as it struck the ground, killing them in its own destruction.

Leudast stopped cheering. He was too awed to see how many of his countrymen had survived the ferocious Algarvian bombardment. But the Algarvians showed no awe. They went about their business with the air of men who'd done it many times before. A charge of behemoths tore an opening in the first defensive line. Footsoldiers swarmed through the gap. Then some of them wheeled and attacked the line from the rear. Others pushed on toward Leudast.

"They did that too fast, curse them," Lieutenant Recared said from a hole not far from Leudast's. "They should have been hung up there longer."

"They're good at what they do, sir," Leudast answered. "They wouldn't be here in our kingdom if they weren't."

"Powers below eat them," Recared said, and then, "Ha! They've just found the second belt of eggs." He shouted toward the redheads: "Enjoy it, you whoresons!"

But the Algarvians kept coming. In two years of war against them, Leudast had rarely known them to be less than game. They were game here, sure enough. After a few minutes, he started to curse. "Will you look at what those buggers have done? They're using that dry wash to get up toward our second line."

"That's not good," Recared said. "They weren't supposed to go that way. They were supposed to be drawn toward the places where we have more men."

"I wish it would rain," Leudast said savagely. "They'd drown then."

"I wish our dragons would come and flame them to ruins and drop eggs on the ones left alive," Recared said.

"Aye." Leudast nodded. "The redheads' dragons would do that to us, down in Sulingen."

Recared sounded worried. "I don't think our men up there in the second line can see what the Algarvians are doing." He shouted, "Crystallomancer!" When no one answered, he shouted again, louder.

This time, he did get a reply. "He's dead, sir, and his crystal smashed," a trooper said.

"Sergeant." Recared turned to Leudast. "Go down there and let them know. With everything else that's going on, I really don't think they have any idea what Mezentio's men are up to. If a regiment of redheads erupts into the middle of that line, it won't hold. Get moving."

"Aye, sir." Leudast scrambled out of his hole, got to his feet, and started trotting toward the line ahead. If he hadn't, Recared would have blazed him on the spot. As things were, all he had to do was run across perhaps half a mile of field and grassland full of buried eggs. If he went up like a torch in a blaze of sorcerous energy, the second line wouldn't know its danger till too late.

He looked back over his shoulder. Three or four more Unkerlanter soldiers came trotting after him. He nodded to himself. Recared was minimizing the risk. The pup made a pretty fair officer.

Leudast trotted on. One foot in front of the other. Don't think about what happens if a foot comes down in the wrong place. Odds are, it won't happen. Don't think about it. Odds are, it won't. And the insistent, rising scream in his mind- Oh, but what if it does?

It didn't. He still had trouble finding the Unkerlanter field fortifications. Then a nervous soldier in a rock-gray tunic popped up and almost blazed him. Panting, he stammered out his message. The soldier lowered his stick. "Come on, pal," he said. "You'd better tell my captain."

Tell him Leudast did. The captain's crystallomancer was still alive. He got the word to soldiers nearer the dry wash. An attack went in. It didn't stop the Algarvians, but it slowed them, rocked them back on their heels.

"Your lieutenant did well to send you," the captain told Leudast. He handed him a flask. "Here. Have a taste of this. You've earned it."

"Thanks, sir." Leudast swigged. Spirits ran hot down his throat. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve. "Are we winning?"

The captain answered with a broad-shouldered shrug. "We're just getting started."

Twelve